In Shakespeare's day, there was intense interest in gardens. A wealth of new plants was being brought to England from all over the world, and Elizabethan gardens reached new heights of beauty and complexity. Shakespeare himself owned three houses with gardens in Stratford-on-Avon, and his plays are filled with allusions to plants and gardens.

Fourteen gardens in England, the United States, and Canada have been photographed by Hales, one of today's premier landscape photographers. They include Shakespeare's own gardens as well as the three great restorations of major Elizabethan properties created by the Dowager Countess of Salisbury--Hatfield House, Hertfordshire; Cranborne Manor, Dorset; and the Museum of Garden History at St. Mary-at-Lambeth, London. Gardens in the United States that were inspired by and dedicated to the Bard include Shakespeare gardens at Northwestern University in Evanston; Central Park in New York City and Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York; The Mayflower Inn in Washington, Connecticut; and Montgomery, Alabama. Canada is represented by gardens in Stratford, Ontario, and by the University College of the Fraser Valley and Stanley Park in British Columbia. Hales describes each garden in detail and fills in the history of its creation.

Following the gardens is an Illustrated Alphabet of Plants, which includes more than eighty flowers, herbs, shrubs, and trees that Shakespeare mentions in his plays. Each photograph, usually made in a garden setting, is accompanied by a quotation from one of the plays in which the plant or flower is mentioned and is introduced with a sentence or two setting the scene.

The combination of glorious gardens and the words of the Bard offers many pleasures for lovers of gardens and lovers of Shakespeare's immortal plays.